Creating Jewel Covers with IrfanView 🐱

Even Bootable Recovery Disc Needs a Cover, Hey it’s better then Flicking through a Binder

This was something I been meaning to do for awhile and finally got around to it. There are dozens of recovery disc laying around in The Lab with noway of identify them from each other, well that’s going to change with IrfanView. One of the most know pieces of software when is comes to images, you could ask anyone about IrfanView and they would easy tell you it’s what Windows should have as a image editor and no we’re not talking about Microsoft Paint either.

Having Recovery Disk laying around in The Lab is usually what starts the messy look leading you to clean it. So part of cleaning this time involves creating custom covers for disc like Memtest86 | Lazesoft Recovery Suite | Macrium Reflect | Bart PE | Hirens BootCD and keep them together instead of flipping though a binder.
By no means am I any professional photo editor, it was only recently that GIMP came on the radar and it was only because of the blog. You’ll eventually have to play around with some Photo editor if you plan on resizing images or doing some light editing. When it comes to IrfanView I ant no stranger, it’s been getting used since 2007 along with it been a part of the Top Applications with every OS installation.

So lets jump right in shall we, first you’ll have to download IrfanView obviously, once’s it’s installed we’re going to tweak some settings and make it a little more easier on the eyes. Firer up IrfanView and press the (P) key to open properties/settings and select Toolbar. When there uncheck Thumbnails, Print, Properties/Settings and AboutIrfanView under Show/Hide toolbar buttons. You can also change the Toolbar skin if you feel the need to make it look better, followed by clicking Ok. Samuel 16 Skin makes the buttons smaller there’s saving you space.

Note: During the installation you’ll be notified on what file types should IrfanView use, Select Images Only. For some apparent reason if you decided to Select all from the installer and want just images you can change that under Extensions in the Properties/Settings, Click Clear all and then Images only.

Now it’s time to fine a cover for the jewel case, to get things started Bart PE has some Wallpapers with high DPI Resolution. With high DPI images we’ll be able to take the cover from say 1280×1024 dimensions to 12.2x 12.2cm, but before we do I’m going to point out a few things that can move along the project a little faster.

Tip: If you fine yourself getting tired of clicking on Menus and wanna know the keyboard shortcuts for the specific task click Help and then Keyboard Shortcuts or Press (F1) key.

Opening images in IrfanView usually, sometimes the image gets display at it’s native resolution and working with such a big images can get really annoying fast. Click View then Display Options (Windows Mode) followed by Fit Images to Desktop (F) or (Shift + F) key to Fit only big Images to Desktop.

Tip: Holding down Ctrl and using the Scroll Wheel you can Zoom in and out making the image fit to your desire.

Knowing basic information about the image can also help a ton, click Image then Information or (I) key to open the Image properties, there you be greeted with information from Original Size, Current Size, Print Size (from DPI), Disk Size and Comments along with additional information. For example if you were to download IPTC info DLL you would get even more information about the image you are working with.

First thing were going to is decide the dimensions, before that click Edit then Show selection grid and thirds or fourths if you want. Hold down left click on the image your want to edit and drag the selected grid around the spot you want to use as a cover. Try making the width and Height dimensions the same, for example if you were to have a large Music Collection then you would know that the covers of albums usually come at 600×600 or 1200×1200, so lets keep the width and height the same.

There should be a grid looking box over the image at this point, if you were to look at the Caption basically the Title bar in IrfanView you see the grid size and in the Status bar below you’ll see the Original size for the image. Pressing (Alt + Shift S) or (Alt + Shift C) key would Hide or Show the additional information. Once the demensions are the same click Edit then Crop Selection (Cut out) or (Ctrl + Y) key.

If you fine yourself fighting with the grid, here are a few tips that can help. Holding down the Alt key and using the arrow keys on the keyboard would move the grid to your desire dimensions. Holding down the (Ctrl) key and using the arrow keys would keep the same Aspect Ratio for the gird. While were on the topic about the using arrow keys, hold down (Ctrl + Shift) and use the arrow keys to rotate the image. Press (Ctrl + U) to open Custom/Fine rotation or if your just looking to flip the image then you would press (v) key to Virtual Flip, (H) key to Horizontal Flip, along with (L) key to Rotate Left and (R) key to Rotate Right.

All is left now is to touch up the image before printing, if you would like to remove some text or something else for that matter, that has a basic color behind it for example black, press (F12) key to launch the editor. Select picker and the background color from the image, then the paintbrush, to change the size of the paintbrush enter the width (px).

Now that the image is to your liking, it’s time to print. Click File then Print or Press (Ctrl + P) key, on this last step were not going to just click print, select Custom Width and Height under Print size, make sure Aspect Ratio box is ticked. this is the step were the high DPI comes in to get the right dimensions for the jewel case you would enter Width: 12.20 and Height will be maintained automatically if you ticked Aspect Ratio box.

Change Print size from Original size (from image DPI) to Custom you’ll clearly see the image change to the dimensions we entered. Select Portrait or Landscape and center the image with a tick under Position on paper.

When the image finishes printing cut and place you newly created cover in the jewel case. There maybe other programs that can do things a little easier then IrfanView, but with a little know how, you can create amazing covers for just about any CD/DVD case you many have laying around the house. The A4 paper maybe not the best solution for jewel CD covers and have to agree, if you happen to have some white Card Stock then that would be even better.

So if you found this Tutorial on How to Create Custom CD/DVD covers with IrfanView, then you many wanna checkout some other useful Tutorials found on this blog and let me know your thoughts in the comment section.

PhoneyVirus
Has a passion for computer hardware and dream’s of been a professional technician one day, fairly educated on the subject and opened minded. Programing maybe one of many interest, but are divided into what you call time. When he ant learning what’s new, he’s usually jamming out on electric guitar or playing some awesome PC Game.

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There will be no means of professionalism on this blog, it's a place to Rant about Crap that makes the beast come out in me and to let off some steam. So feel free to browse around and enjoy yourself, if you have any questions you like to ask related to computer gear or games click email me PhoneyVirus.

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PhoneyVirus

Now that I have a lot of time on my hands what else is there do but play PC Game's. I spend about fifteen hours a week playing electric guitar noting less, exploring and listening to new music, reading the monthly magazine's from PC Gamer and Maximum PC. Keeping up with the weekly news and keeping Stress down as much as possible the same time.

Also really enjoy looking for new software to play around with Building, Repairing, Tweaking, and Over-Clocking Computers. Modding Hacking Hardware like Routers, Consoles, Satellites and anything I can get my hands on.

When I ant doing any of the above, I'm outside enjoying the sun and ranting about stuff that make’s me mad. Plus repairing other people’s machines from the community, I also rant about that too, but it’s enough to keep me busy and can’t complain when you love doing what you do.